Jimmy Fallon Predicts How His ‘Tonight Show’ Run Will Go

Jimmy Fallon is set to take over The Tonight Show on Monday, February 17th, and he gave an interview to Vulture talking about the transition. Here he is giving what’ll probably be an accurate prediction of his initial ratings:

“I’m sure we’ll do great the first week because the Olympics will give us a good lead-in. And then after the Olympics, you know, we have a normal ten-o’clock lead-in, so the ratings will go down. That’ll be a headline: ‘Fallon loses 40 percent of his audience.’ [Once Seth Meyers takes over Late Night on February 24th], our ratings will go up a little bit because people will be intrigued about Seth’s show, and then after that week, it’ll go back down. And that’ll be kind of where we can start building from there.”

Fallon also mentions that he hopes NBC will pay more patient with him than Conan O’Brien but hasn’t received any sort of guarantee, explaining, “They haven’t actually given me, like, anything in writing. I’m just assuming it’s gonna work, so maybe I’m dumb for that.” He adds, “I’ll do whatever it takes. If you want me to sing, I’ll sing. You want me to dance, I’ll dance. You want me to dress as a woman, I’ll dress like a woman. I don’t care what I have to do. But I never do anything sneaky or try to make guests look bad or try to trick them.”